ePub Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused by Garth Fowden in History

Description

For some; the idea of an Islamic state serves to fulfill aspirations for cultural sovereignty and new forms of ethical political practice. For others; it violates the proper domains of both religion and politics. Yet; while there has been much discussion of the idea and ideals of the Islamic state; its possibilities and impossibilities; surprisingly little has been written about how this political formation is lived. For Love of the Prophet looks at the Republic of Sudan's twenty-five-year experiment with Islamic statehood. Focusing not on state institutions; but rather on the daily life that goes on in their shadows; Noah Salomon’s careful ethnography examines the lasting effects of state Islamization on Sudanese society through a study of the individuals and organizations working in its midst.Salomon investigates Sudan at a crucial moment in its history―balanced between unity and partition; secular and religious politics; peace and war―when those who desired an Islamic state were rethinking the political form under which they had lived for nearly a generation. Countering the dominant discourse; Salomon depicts contemporary Islamic politics not as a response to secularism and Westernization but as a node in a much longer conversation within Islamic thought; augmented and reappropriated as state projects of Islamic reform became objects of debate and controversy.Among the first books to delve into the making of the modern Islamic state; For Love of the Prophet reveals both novel political ideals and new articulations of Islam as it is rethought through the lens of the nation.